SOUTHERN SAMI

'Southern Sami' is the south-westernmost of the Sami languages. It is a seriously endangered language; the last strongholds of this language are the municipalities of Snåsa and Hattfjelldal in Norway. There are approximately 2000 people considered ethnically Southern Sami in Norway and Sweden, but only approximately 500 of them can fluently speak the language.

Contents

Writing system

Phonology

Vowels

Consonants

Grammar

Sound alterations

Cases

Verbs

Person

Mood

Tense

Grammatical number

Negative verb

Syntax

References

External links

Writing system

Even though Southern Sámi is one of the six Sámi languages that has an official written language, only a few books have been published for the language, one of which is a good-size Southern Sámi-Norwegian dictionary.
Southern Sami uses the latin alphabet:
A/a, B/b, D/d, E/e, F/f, G/g, H/h, I/i, (Ï/ï), J/j, K/k, L/l, M/m, N/n, O/o, P/p, R/r, S/s, T/t, U/u, V/v, Y/y, Æ/æ, Ø/ø, Å/å
Ä/ä is a variant of Æ/æ, Ö/ö is a variant of Ø/ø. The variants Ä/ä, Ö/ö are used in Sweden, Æ/æ, Ø/ø in Norway, in accordance with the usage in Swedish and Norwegian. The Ï/ï represents a back version of I/i, many texts do not distinguish between the two.
C/c, Q/q, W/w, X/x, Z/z are used in words of foreign origin.

Phonology

Southern Sami has two dialects, the northern and the southern dialect. The phonological differences between the dialects are relatively small; the phonemic system of the northern dialect is explained below.

Vowels

The vowel phonemes of the northern dialect are the following; orthographic counterparts are given in brackets:

	front		central		back
	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
close	(i)	(y)	(ï/i)1	(u)		(o)
mid	(e)					(å)
open	(æ/ä)2				(a)

¹The distinction between the vowels and is normally not indicated in spelling: both of these sounds are written with the letter ''i''. However, dictionaries and other linguistically precise sources use the character ''ï'' for the latter vowel.
²The letter ''æ'' is used in Norway, and ''ä'' in Sweden.
The non-high vowels ''e'', ''ε'', ''o'' and ''a'' contrast in length: they may occur as both short and long. High vowels only occur as short.
The vowels may combine to form ten different diphthongs:

	front	front to back	central to back	central to front	back	back to front
close to mid	(ie)	(yø/yö)		(ue), (ie/ïe)	(oe)
close to open			(ua)
close						(øø/öö)
mid to open	(ea)				(åa)	(åe)

Consonants

Grammar

Sound alterations

A typical feature of Southern Sami is the alteration of first-syllable vowels through Umlaut in the declension and conjugation of words. Often there are three different vowels that alterate with each other in the paradigm of a single word, for example as follows:

★ ''ae'' ~ ''aa'' ~ ''ee'': ''vaedtsedh'' 'to walk' : ''vaadtsam'' 'I walk' : ''veedtsim'' 'I walked'

★ ''ue'' ~ ''ua'' ~ ''øø'': ''vuelkedh'' 'to leave' : ''vualkam'' 'I leave' : ''vøølkim'' 'I left'
On the other hand, Southern Sami is the only Sami language that does not have consonant gradation. Hence consonants in the middle of words never alterate in Southern Sami, even though such alterations are frequent in other Sami languages. Compare, for instance, Southern Sami ''nomme'' 'name' : ''nommesne'' 'in the name' to Northern Sami ''namma'' : ''namas'', with the consonant gradation ''mm'' : ''m''.

Cases

Southern Sámi has 8 cases:

Case	Singular ending	Plural ending
Nominative	-	''-h''
Genitive	''-n''	''-i'' / ''-j''
Accusative	''-m''	''-jte'' / ''-ite'' / ''-idie''
Inessive	''-sne'' / ''-snie''	''-ine'' / ''-jne'' / ''-inie''
Elative	''-ste'' / ''-stie''	''-jste'' / ''-jstie''
Illative	''-n'' / ''-se'' / ''-sse''	''-jte'' / ''-ite'' / ''-idie''
Comitative	''-ine'' / ''-jne'' / ''-inie''	''-igujmie'' / ''-jgujmie''
Essive	''-ine'' / ''-jne'' / ''-inie''	(no plural form)

Southern Sámi is one of the few Sámi languages that still differentiates between the accusative and the genitive morphologically.

Verbs

Person

Southern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical persons:

★ first person

★ second person

★ third person

Mood

Tense

Grammatical number

Southern Sami verbs conjugate for three grammatical numbers:

★ singular

★ dual

★ plural

Negative verb

Southern Sami, like Finnish, the other Sámi languages and Estonian, has a negative verb. In Southern Sámi, the negative verb conjugates according to tense (past and non-past), mood (indicative and imperative), person (1st, 2nd and 3rd) and number (singular, dual and plural). This differs from some other the other Sami languages, e.g., from Northern Sami, which do not conjugate according to tense.

Southern Sami negative verb, indicative forms

	Non-past indicative			Past indicative
	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	im	ean	ibie	idtjim	idtjimen	idtjimh
2nd	ih	idien	idie	idtjih	idtjiden	idtjidh
3rd	ij	eakan	eah	idtji	idtjigan	idtjin

Southern Sami negative verb, imperative forms

	Non-past imperative			Past imperative
	Singular	Dual	Plural	Singular	Dual	Plural
1st	aelliem	aellien	aellebe	ollem	ollen	ollebe
2nd	aellieh	aelleden	aellede	ollh	olleden	ollede
3rd	aellis	aellis	aellis	olles	olles	olles

Syntax

Unlike the other Sámi languages, Southern Sámi is an SOV language.

References

★ Bergsland, Knut. ''Røroslappisk grammatikk'', 1946.

★ Bergsland, Knut. ''Sydsamisk grammatikk'', 1982.

★ Bergsland, Knut and Lajla Mattson Magga. ''Åarjelsaemien-daaroen baakoegærja'', 1993.

★ Hasselbrink, Gustav. ''Südsamisches Wörterbuch I–III''

External links

★ Sámi lottit Names of birds found in Sápmi in a number of languages, including Skolt Sámi and English. Search function only works with Finnish input though.

★ Southern Sámi grammar

★ Southern Sámi analyzer

★ Samien Sijte - Southern Sámi Museum and Cultural Center

★ Sørsamisk forskning og undervisning - Universitetet i Tromsø